What about Mercury?

[LoneStranger]

I'm thinking about a Japanese Bay, Miyamoto??, where the effects of years, under 40 years?, of dumping of mercury in waters resulted in children with all kinds of strange problems.

Part of the impetus for EPA was all of the really neat pictures that they had of these children and the knowledge that there was no fixing of the children.

So all of you supposed Pro-Life Conservatives please go and look this up and come back and tell me that the EPA has to go and this was only TS.

[hksigwalther]

IIRC, Robert Ginty's character in the movie The Exterminator does the mercury trick and seals it with solder.

Since mercury (Hg) is a liquid, would it not act as a dampening agent and deteriorate the bullet's rotation? Much like spinning a raw egg as compared to a hard boiled (solid) one.

[Rickmeister]

Mercury, in its elemental state, isn't much of a poison. But say you grind up a little bit of cinnebar (mercury sulfide) and toss that into the equation...

[CWL]

Cutting an "x" onto the top of your lead bullet is the original "Dum Dum" bullet, supposedly first done by British colonial soldiers somewhere in DumDum India. Became very widespread once the effectiveness of the round was noted.

This practice led to the first discussions into legitimate 'rules of warfare'.

[Selfdfenz]

priv8ter
Never heard of it but I would say attempting to produce a poisoned bullet in this manner would be more dangerous to the bullet manufacturer than the finished product would be to the target.

Whatever gain in lethality might be gained by poisoned bullets could be better and more easily accomplished by just using a bigger or faster projectile and results would be more obvious immediately following the shot ,would they not?

S-

[sm]

Mercury, Nurses used to keep me busy removing from jewelry, If plain , or set with diamonds, rubies,or sapphires used heat to remove. These stones take heat, other method was to use nitric acid. Still have removed stones , heated, just to make sure mercury removed.

Of course, sometimes just waiting till after the weekend, all that was left was useless. Got a lot of desperate calls on the weekend.

Mike, seen those MRI's and CAT scans--yep somethin' missing.

Cyanide: people have asked about this one, DANGEROUS stuff!!
re: gas chamber.
Very very careful with cyanide and nitric acid in same shop.

FWIW cyanide, once you feel how "slippery" it is and the unique "almond smell", you'll never forget it.

best

[Aion]

Always thought a suitable sized mercury-filled gel-cap (.45 cal or so) at supressed delivery would make a decent untraceable bullet. Yeah, run a ballistic check on a liquid ....

Wasn't there a story by Len Deighton or Agatha Christie (I know, how can you get those two confused?) where the bullet was made of ice? Never did figure out how that could work. Must be F.M.

- Aion

[h_tolley]

If the mercury-tipped bullet exploded is was most likely mercury fulminate they were referring to. Unstable and explosive, more sensitive than nitro glycerin. I believe silver fulminate is mush more widely use than mercury fulminate nowadays...

[HankB]

A good 20 or 25 ago I saw packs of "Mer-Core" bullets as reloading components at a gun shop outside of Chicago. I kid you not! A half dozen or so were in a plastic baggie with reloading instructions. IIRC they were jacketed and had some kind of a plug glued over the nose. Pricey, too.

I think they were an alternative to the "Exploder" and "Devastator" ammunition that enjoyed a brief spurt of popularity back then.

I wanted nothing to do with them . . . I, too, had played with metallic mercury when I was little, but by the time I saw these bullets, I'd learned about the toxicity of mercury compounds and the inadvisability of inhaling the vapors.

[uptown]

Regarding ice bullets:

I don't see how an ice bullet could take the force of a powder explosion without the bullet being blown to pieces. In order to use a bullet like this, your gun would have to be pneumatic I would think.

I have heard of ice bullets before, but these are bullets made of a special material which dissolve after impact, leaving no exit wounds. Many Kennedy assasination buffs believe that these type of ice bullets were used in his assasination. It is also believed, in some conspiracy circles, a dry ice bullet was used to ice Ron Brown a few years ago. (no pun intended).

[Quartus]

Brett nailed it. The metallic forms of lead and mercury do little or nothing to you. Get them into a compound form and you've got a nasty poison. Or make nice vapors.

As for the EPA, they have a good track record of making mountains out of molehills. That doesn't mean that ALL they say and do is bogus, but trusting them blindly is not a good idea.


You should trust the FBI, though.

[Solitar]

Add me to the list of kids who played with pools of mercury in my hand. It was neat feeling how heavy it was, yet liquid. Also did the mercury and coin thing. Guess that explains why I'm a bit abnormal. If it hadn't been for that and casting lead stuff, maybe I'd qualify for the one of the (triple 9" (999) instead of only Colloquy.
But given my experience with Mensa, I'm reluctant to again join up with such unrealistic BS societies. Libertarians are like that too.
Here is a good summary page of what High IQ groups there are out there.
http://www.polymath-systems.com/intel/hiqsocs/

But back to guns and ammo...

Is there anything for bullets that is better than lead?

[labgrade]

Better'n lead?

I guess, but I don't think anything else has pretty much all of it going for it like lead does - heavy, cheap, maleable, etc.

Far as mercury as a bullet itself, I don't think it has the wherewithal to stick to gether once it hits something. I'd guess it'd fly apart rather than penetrate.

[Fatcat]

Shoot, I almost inadvertantly killed myself with carburetor cleaner.. I think I'll stay away from the mercury.

[makarov]

If you want to see the effect of mercury in the environment do a search for "Minimata Disease" - Japanese were eating fish which bio-accumulated mercury. It is very teratogenic - causes mutations which affected children. Very sad pictures of deformities.

[Brett Bellmore]

Better than lead for bullets? Depending on what you want the bullet to do, sure. Copper is good for expansion, tungstun for penetration, bismuth is a good non-toxic lead substitute. Lead's big advantage is that it's reasonably good as a bullet, and really cheap. If money was no issue, you could probably make an amazingly good bullet out of gold or platinum.

[444]

" On a tangential note, in some westerns, I've seen guys scoring the tips of their bullets with a knife before using them. They cut a little cross in the end. Does this have some effect on ballistics, or is it just some weird ritual?"

I have never played with mercury, but I have cut an X on .22LR solids to make something like a hollow point. And yes, I did field test them on many species that would probably land me in jail now if I did the same thing today. They did make a huge difference in the performance.

[Mike Irwin]

Come to think of it, back in the 1970s in Iraq there was a shipment of grain that had been treated with a mercury-based fungicide.

It was supposed to be used for starter crop for the next year, but it ended up being made into bread.

6,500 people became sick, over 450 died.

As with Minimata in Japan, pregnant women who ate the contaminated bread had children with nerve damage.